The present invention relates to corn harvesting and more particularly to a novel attachment for a combine harvester.
Recent studies have found that earcorn especially high-moisture earcorn is equal to, or better feed than shelled corn for the dairy cow or growing feeder cattle, especially high-moisture earcorn. This finding has the advantage of allowing a farmer to recover a higher tonnage of feed per acre than previously while also improving the quality of the feed. Also, corncobs are being used as fuel and in biomass procedures. Conventional combine harvesters used for harvesting corn are efficient machines but are effectively limited to harvesting only shelled corn or corn incorporating only small amounts of cob and discharge most of the cob back onto the ground. This is attributed, inter alia, to the fact that when the fingered vanes on the harvester's adjustable chaffer are opened to allow larger amounts of broken cob to fall through, the vanes are almost vertical. This tends to causes causes pieces of cob to lodge in the fingers and plug the chaffer. As a result, the vanes must be lowered and less cob can be obtained for a corn-and-cob-mix.
The present invention provides an attachment for a combine harvester which allows for the harvesting of a mix of corn-and-cob incorporating a higher percentage of cob than previously which can be used for feed or the cob can be separated and used for other purposes.